Trump’s administration announced on Thursday that it is firing 10,000 employees in the Department of Health and Human Services as part of a widespread reorganization that reflects the priorities of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and driving the White House to shrink the government.
The redundancies are a drastic reduction in staff for the Health Department, which employed about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through the supervision of medical care, food and drugs.
The redundancies and reorganization will reduce deeply in two organizations within the attraction of Mr Kennedy: The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These organizations are expected to lose about 20 % of their staff only from the latest cuts.
Along with the previous acquisitions and first retirements promoted by Trump administration policies, the move will violate the Health Department in about 62,000 employees, the organization said.
The restructuring aims to bring communications and other functions directly below Mr. Kennedy. And includes the creation of a new section called the administration for a healthy America.
“We will do more with less,” Mr Kennedy said, even when he acknowledged it would be “a painful period for HHS”
Mr Kennedy claimed that rates of chronic diseases increased by Biden’s administration, even when the government increased. But he did not provide data to support his claim. Experts say that rates of chronic disease have been increasing in the last two decades, including Trump’s first administration. Two 2024 problem analyzes used CDC data from 2020.
The Health Secretary threw the changes as a way to concentrate on the health organization of Americans, but does not describe details of how it would reduce diabetes rates, heart disease or any other conditions.
In the affected services, the stunned employees struggled to absorb the news. Democrats and external experts have said that the move would restore the services accused of protecting the health and safety of the US public, depriving the scientific experience needed to respond to current and future biological threats.
“In the middle of the deterioration in national influenza and measles influenza epidemics, not to mention an Epidemic of Fentanyl, Trump is destroying vital health services with the accuracy of a bull in a China store,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat, Democrat.
He called Mr Kennedy’s comments to make more with a less “irrational proposal” that “defies common sense”. Her feelings were repeated by several services officials who spoke about the condition of anonymity to avoid punishment.
They said they were not worried about themselves, but about the country, expressing their concern about what the redundancies for public health would mean and whether the risk was really what the Americans wanted.
As part of the project, the CDC, which manages a wide range of health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, mother’s health and vaccine distribution for children, would return to the “basic mission” of infectious disease.
“Converting CDC to an organization that focuses exclusively on infectious diseases leads us to 1948 without realizing that in 2025, the main causes of death are non -contagious diseases,” said Dr. Anand Parekh, who served in the Ministry of Health during the Ministry Washington.
The CDC will reduce its workforce by about 2,400 employees and will limit its focus on “preparation and response to epidemics and outbreaks”, an HHS newsletter said. But it will also absorb the administration of the Ministry of Health for strategic readiness and response, which has 1,000 employees and was raised in its own separate service under Biden’s administration during the Corona Pandemic.
The reorganization will reduce 3,500 jobs from the FDA, which approves and oversees the safety of a huge layer of medicines and foods eating and based on prosperity, the newsletter said. The cuts are said to be administrative, but some of the roles support research and monitoring the safety and purity of food and drugs, as well as travel planning for inspectors investigating food and drug facilities abroad.
The National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff members and the organization that manages Medicare and Medicaid are expected to lose 300.
All of these organizations tend to operate with their own power, and Mr Kennedy contradicts all of them. Mr. Kennedy also attacked them with other parts of the department, in a video on YouTube.
“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees do not even come to work,” he claimed. “The HHS has more than 100 communication offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens of supplies and nine HR departments, in many cases, do not even talk to each other.
Mr Kennedy’s move to control health communications is important. Currently, organizations, such as CDC, NIH and FDA, manage their own communications with the press and the public.
During Trump’s first administration, the CDC collided with the White House, which silenced the service scientists and took control of its public promotion for Covid-19. The organization’s lead spokesman abandoned frustration last week, saying the CDC has been thrown out since January when Mr Trump returned to the office.
The 28 departments of the Department of Health and Human Services will be unified in 15 new departments, according to a statement issued by the Department. Mr Kennedy announced the changes to his video. Staff cuts, mentioned earlier than the Wall Street Journal, are made in accordance with President Trump’s order to execute the government efficiency department to shrink the federal workforce.
The plan also includes the collapse of 10 HHS regional offices to five.
The department informed the leaders of the “power reduction” union – known as “RIF” in federal share – early Thursday morning by email. The message, acquired by the New York Times, said that the redundancies would probably come into force on May 27 and “were mainly addressed to administrative positions, including human resources, computer science, supply and funding”.
The Democrats, including Mrs Murray, reacted with fury to cuts. Spokesman Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the leading Democrat in the Committee on Supervisory and Government Reform, said the cuts were alarming in the midst of a bird flu epidemic and the increase in measles cases.
“This is a serious mistake,” Mr Connolly said in a statement, “and I have serious concerns about how this will affect the well -being of Americans now and for the future.”
Republicans seemed to take more than a waiting attitude and to see. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of the Health Commission, said he had a breakfast with Mr Kennedy on Thursday. Mr Cassidy suggested that he was open to reorganization, but it was expected that the two “would have more conversations” about specific cuts as their results became clearer.
Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Union of Treasury Employees, who represents 18,500 HHS staff across the country, issued a statement that is committed to “seeking every opportunity to fight on behalf of these dedicated civil servants”.
“The administration’s claims that such deep cuts in the food and medicine service and other critical HHS offices will not be harmful are irrational,” Ms Greenwald said.
Xavier Becerra, who served as Minister of Health under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., issued a statement saying that the cuts would probably degrade services to the elderly and people with disabilities and those who have mental health challenges, in addition to health crises.
“This has the things of an anthropogenic disaster,” he told social media.
Mr Kennedy suggested in the video that the changes would help his team have more access to the data. This perspective was alarming for its critics, given Mr Kennedy’s long history of handling the data to promote arguments about what he supports are the dangers of vaccines that have been widely safe.
“In one case,” Mr Kennedy said, “provocative bureaucrats prevented the secretary of the secretary from accessing the narrow guarded databases that could reveal the dangers of certain medications and medical interventions.”
Mr Kennedy said that the new section he is creating, the administration for a healthy America, would combine a number of organizations focusing on substance abuse therapy and chemical safety, as well as the organization that manages courts handling federal vaccine injuries.
“We will consolidate all these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient,” he said. “These goals will honor the expectations of the vast majority of existing HHS officials who really want to make America healthy.”
Michael Gold They contributed reports.
